Grass Valley, California, 28 March 2011 – New at NAB, Ensemble Designs is introducing a new, smart switch for ASI transmission streams for use in broadcast television applications. The new MPEG analysis and switch technology will be demonstrated on Ensemble Designs' booth N1323. The National Association of Broadcasters Show will be held in Las Vegas April 11-14, 2011.

For use in transmission, satellite and broadcast, the Avenue 4445 is a smart 2x1 switch that combines detailed analysis of the transport stream and removes all jitter in DVB-ASI streams. The 4445 is both a clean switch and a fail-safe bypass protection switch for use with critical broadcast feeds.

This switch for broadcasters ensures a signal is broadcast to the home viewer at all times. Two signals are fed to the 4445, the main on-air signal and a back up feed. If the main signal has a problem then the switch goes to the backup feed which keeps the broadcaster on air at all times.

The 4445 uses internal buffers to align the two streams to matching points that will allow clean switching. It switches at the beginning of an I-frame so that downstream equipment is never disrupted. Clean switching is critical for downstream equipment such as MPEG encoders and home set-top decoders.

The 4445 acts as a time base corrector for ASI streams by removing all jitter and putting a new clock onto the output stream. A more accurate clock is also beneficial to downstream devices such as MPEG encoders and transmitters. Other applications include STLs, satellite feeds, transoceanic cable, terrestrial fiber and is especially useful for SFNs (Single Frequency Networks.)

The 4445 Smart and Clean switch is part of the Ensemble Designs' Avenue signal processing family of equipment used broadcast, production and post applications.

Based in Grass Valley, California, and founded in 1989, Ensemble Designs is a leading provider of signal processing and infrastructure products to the professional broadcast industry, and other government and commercial applications. Customers include RAI, CBS News, NASA, Major League Baseball, Olympic Broadcast Organisation, Sky, ESPN, The Moving Picture Company and TVNZ.